Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The CC$$ in a Taiwan newspaper (& my response)

Sent to the Taiwan News, June 18.
America's new common core is a bad solution to a problem that does not exist ("Common core, in 9 year old eyes," June 18).
The common core is intended to fix America's "broken schools," but the
major problem in education in the US is poverty: The US now ranks 34th
in the world out of 35 economically developed countries in child
poverty: when researchers control for the effect of poverty, US
international test scores are at the top of the world. The obvious
path is to protect children from the impact of poverty: improve
nutrition through school food programs, improve health care through
investing more in school nurses, and improving access to books through
investing in school libraries. Studies show, unsurprisingly, that
children who are hungry, ill and have little or nothing to read, do not
do well in school. Instead, the US government is investing billions in a
tougher, more "rigorous" curriculum and instituting an astonishing
amount of testing, more than we have ever seen on this planet. There is
no evidence that any of this will help children. Susan Ohanian has
provided an accurate description of the common core: “a radical untried
curriculum overhaul” combined with “nonstop national testing."
Stephen Krashen
Note: The article that was in the Taiwan News was reprinted from the New York Times.